Re: [CODE4LIB] GNU Metadata Exchange Utilities
On Tue, 27 Mar 2007, Eric Lease Morgan wrote: On Mar 23, 2007, at 4:37 PM, Laurence Finston wrote: I feel for your situation. Really. Not having a job or a means for supporting computing project is stressful, to say the least. Such a thing is one of my biggest fears. Sigh. Thank you. When you say things like: I don't think a GUI is necessary for this package, but one could be written. and There are a lot of free tools, libraries, etc., for some of the tasks involved, notably `libxml' for handling XML data and YAZ for accessing Z39.50 servers. I know you are on a track others will appreciate. All I can say is Good luck, sincerely. I think that many libraries, etc., would be happy to use the package if it was ready to use, but that it will be much harder to find an institution that's willing to make the investment in developing it. I believe this is so, even though the investment would be fairly modest, i.e., hiring one person, namely myself. Nowadays, a project like this wouldn't require any software or hardware that a library or computer center wouldn't have anyway, or couldn't obtain easily. Nonetheless, I think the way people are hired nowadays is making it difficult for me to find an employer to support this project. Programmers in the library field and related fields may see the value of my approach, but I suspect that they probably aren't doing the hiring. The head of the programming dept., if there is a programming dept., may never even see my application. It's only too easy to imagine someone saying sounds great, but let someone else pay for it. The problem is, if no one's willing to support the project, or at least hire me to do something else, it's not going to get off the ground. I wish I could have done more and had more to show. Much of what I would need to do now, if I could work on the package instead of sending out applications, is reading up on the various free packages and libraries that I plan to use instead of the Microsoft products. This wouldn't show up immediately in the code, though. I haven't gotten a response from every institution to which I've applied, I'm still sending out applications, and I haven't given up hope yet. Thanks again. Laurence Finston http://www.gnu.org/software/metaexchange lfinsto1-*-AT-*-gwdg.de (Replace -*-AT-*- with @ for the email address.)
Re: [CODE4LIB] GNU Metadata Exchange Utilities
Laurence, Does your work draw on any of the work Devon has been doing over at OCLC? http://www.code4lib.org/2006/smith rob Rob Styles Programme Manager, Data Services, Talis tel: +44 (0)870 400 5000 fax: +44 (0)870 400 5001 direct: +44 (0)870 400 5004 mobile: +44 (0)7971 475 257 msn: [EMAIL PROTECTED] irc: irc.freenode.net/mrob,isnick -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Laurence Finston Sent: 23 March 2007 20:38 To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] GNU Metadata Exchange Utilities Eric Lease Morgan wrote: On Mar 21, 2007, at 5:07 AM, Laurence Finston wrote: Cool, and interesting. I think I speak for the community when I sincerely say, Good luck. Thank you. The goals you desire to achieve with the software are the same sorts of goals many of us have. I'm sure some of us will install and experiment with the Exchange Utilities when they are easily installable on the platforms we support. Alas, many of us simply do not have access to Microsoft products. This list is clearly not the place to discuss my personal situation, but I will say that I need to find work in order to continue working on this package. If I'm not employed _to_ work on it, I would work on it in my free time. I think this kind of project could receive funding from some institution, but I'm not in a position to apply for it. One problem with Free Software is finding someone to finance it. Using Microsoft products wasn't my choice. Visual Studio promotes a style of programming that starts with the GUI and then adds functionality to the buttons, edit boxes, etc. This is the opposite of what I think is the right way to go about it. That's why I'm building the new package around an interpreter that I've written using GNU Bison. (Just in case anyone isn't familiar with this topic, Bison is the GNU version of the UNIX utility `yacc'. Bison and yacc are compiler generators.) The sub-package `scantest' can be installed on GNU/Linux systems. It should work on other UNIX-like systems, but I haven't tested this. At present, it's a toy program, since it doesn't perform a useful function, but it might be fun to try. I find it quite enjoyable watching the output from Bison parsers, but perhaps I'm easily amused. I don't think a GUI is necessary for this package, but one could be written. However, I would use a free library and certainly not Visual Studio. I'm not personally a big fan of GUIs, although they can be useful. An interpreter would also be useful in combination with a GUI. However, for this purpose, I think an interpreter for a machine-like language, and a scanner that reads binary files, would be more useful. I've planned to write an interpreter like this for my other package, GNU 3DLDF, but have never had the time. There are a lot of free tools, libraries, etc., for some of the tasks involved, notably `libxml' for handling XML data and YAZ for accessing Z39.50 servers. Much of the work will just be a matter of combining them. I believe that a good approach would be to program filters for the individual tasks I want to solve, i.e., programs that read from their standard input and write to their standard output. Such filters can be chained using pipes. As I'm sure many of you know, this is a typical style of programming in UNIX-like programming environments. Of course, the filter programs could also have side effects, such as writing files. A great deal of my previous work has involved Donald Knuth's TeX and related packages. It's very easy to write programs that output TeX input files, and it's possible to produce very high quality printable output using TeX, usually in the form of PostScript or PDF files. I will probably use TeX to represent the contents of the databases, along with HTML. At present, I'm very occupied with job applications. I also have to perform some tasks resulting from the package having been accepted by the GNU Project. For example, I must add the required options, change copyright notices, work on preparing a release, etc. When I've done something that might be of interest to readers of this list, I will post an announcement. Under the circumstances, it may be awhile before I'm able to devote the necessary time to programming. Laurence Finston The very latest from Talis read the latest news at www.talis.com/news listen to our podcasts www.talis.com/podcasts see us at these events www.talis.com/events join the discussion here www.talis.com/forums join our developer community www.talis.com/tdn and read our blogs www.talis.com/blogs Any views or personal opinions expressed within this email may not be those of Talis Information Ltd. The content of this email message and any files that may be attached are confidential, and for the usage of the intended recipient only. If you are not the intended recipient, then please
Re: [CODE4LIB] GNU Metadata Exchange Utilities
On Mar 21, 2007, at 5:07 AM, Laurence Finston wrote: To what degree do you see the development of the Exchange Utilities moving away from a Microsoft-based environment? My intention is for the package to run on free systems using only free software. In practice, this means first and foremost GNU/Linux, to be followed, if possible, by FreeBSD. All dependencies on Microsoft products will be removed _unless_ the same functionality is available for free systems. This is in accordance with the GNU Coding Standards, as well as my own wishes. I would be perfectly happy for the package to run on Microsoft systems, but this is a secondary consideration. Cool, and interesting. I think I speak for the community when I sincerely say, Good luck. The goals you desire to achieve with the software are the same sorts of goals many of us have. I'm sure some of us will install and experiment with the Exchange Utilities when they are easily installable on the platforms we support. Alas, many of us simply do not have access to Microsoft products. -- Eric Lease Morgan University Libraries of Notre Dame (574) 631-8604
Re: [CODE4LIB] GNU Metadata Exchange Utilities
I didn't get the usual confirmation that the following message was distributed to the mailing list. Perhaps it was rejected because the To address was duplicated in the cc. If it was distributed , please excuse the duplicate posting. Thanks. Laurence ** Eric Lease Morgan wrote: On Mar 20, 2007, at 10:02 AM, Laurence Finston wrote: Laurence, this is very interesting, and thank you for brining it to our attention. Thank you. To what degree do you see the development of the Exchange Utilities moving away from a Microsoft-based environment? My intention is for the package to run on free systems using only free software. In practice, this means first and foremost GNU/Linux, to be followed, if possible, by FreeBSD. All dependencies on Microsoft products will be removed _unless_ the same functionality is available for free systems. This is in accordance with the GNU Coding Standards, as well as my own wishes. I would be perfectly happy for the package to run on Microsoft systems, but this is a secondary consideration. Much of the code is written in C++ (++), but don't know how portable that is. Moreover, some of the descriptive text alludes to Microsoft SQL Server as the underlying database. Alas, many of us don't have access this RDMS. The programs are written entirely in C++. In the earlier parts, namely `ATest', which accesses OAI servers, I used more features specific to Visual Studio and Visual C++. In `ZTest', which accesses data from Z39.50 servers using the YAZ package, tried to avoid using these features and used standard C++ and the Standard Template Library as much as possible. The most recent program, `scantest', which implements the beginnings of what I call a generic query language uses GCC (the GNU Compiler Collection) and runs under GNU/Linux. Standard C++ is quite portable, features from the Microsoft libraries are virtually non-portable and must be replaced. Threads may be a problem. I plan to use Posix threads, which are supported on all UNIX-like systems (to the best of my knowledge). I no longer have access to a Microsoft system and will not support the Microsoft versions. I plan to build the package up around `scantest', which I will be renaming. I will probably call it the GNU Generic Query Language Interpreter. At some later date, I may port the projected GNU/Linux version to Windows (or even MS-DOS). However, I would prefer to do this using GCC and cross-compilation rather than Visual Studio. I don't plan to use Microsoft SQL Server anymore. The SQL code I've written seems to be reasonably portable. I don't think it will be difficult to adapt it to other database software using other versions of SQL. Of course, if I do find a library or other institution interested in supporting this work, that institution would have a say in how I proceed, as long as the requirements of the GNU Project are satisfied. Thank you for your interest. Laurence Finston
Re: [CODE4LIB] GNU Metadata Exchange Utilities
Eric Lease Morgan wrote: On Mar 20, 2007, at 10:02 AM, Laurence Finston wrote: Laurence, this is very interesting, and thank you for brining it to our attention. Thank you. To what degree do you see the development of the Exchange Utilities moving away from a Microsoft-based environment? My intention is for the package to run on free systems using only free software. In practice, this means first and foremost GNU/Linux, to be followed, if possible, by FreeBSD. All dependencies on Microsoft products will be removed _unless_ the same functionality is available for free systems. This is in accordance with the GNU Coding Standards, as well as my own wishes. I would be perfectly happy for the package to run on Microsoft systems, but this is a secondary consideration. Much of the code is written in C++ (++), but don't know how portable that is. Moreover, some of the descriptive text alludes to Microsoft SQL Server as the underlying database. Alas, many of us don't have access this RDMS. The programs are written entirely in C++. In the earlier parts, namely `ATest', which accesses OAI servers, I used more features specific to Visual Studio and Visual C++. In `ZTest', which accesses data from Z39.50 servers using the YAZ package, tried to avoid using these features and used standard C++ and the Standard Template Library as much as possible. The most recent program, `scantest', which implements the beginnings of what I call a generic query language uses GCC (the GNU Compiler Collection) and runs under GNU/Linux. Standard C++ is quite portable, features from the Microsoft libraries are virtually non-portable and must be replaced. Threads may be a problem. I plan to use Posix threads, which are supported on all UNIX-like systems (to the best of my knowledge). I no longer have access to a Microsoft system and will not support the Microsoft versions. I plan to build the package up around `scantest', which I will be renaming. I will probably call it the GNU Generic Query Language Interpreter. At some later date, I may port the projected GNU/Linux version to Windows (or even MS-DOS). However, I would prefer to do this using GCC and cross-compilation rather than Visual Studio. I don't plan to use Microsoft SQL Server anymore. The SQL code I've written seems to be reasonably portable. I don't think it will be difficult to adapt it to other database software using other versions of SQL. Of course, if I do find a library or other institution interested in supporting this work, that institution would have a say in how I proceed, as long as the requirements of the GNU Project are satisfied. Thank you for your interest. Laurence Finston
Re: [CODE4LIB] GNU Metadata Exchange Utilities
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007, Laurence Finston wrote: I am pleased to announce that the package I have been developing has been accepted into the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation under the name GNU Metadata Exchange Utilities. Further information can be found on the webpage: http://www.nongnu.org/iwf-mdh/ So far, only the name has changed since the package was accepted by the GNU Project. The source code will soon be moved to the GNU section of the Savannah developers' website, but there will be links, redirection, etc. I am also planning an official release. Laurence Finston
Re: [CODE4LIB] GNU Metadata Exchange Utilities
On Mar 20, 2007, at 10:02 AM, Laurence Finston wrote: I am pleased to announce that the package I have been developing has been accepted into the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation under the name GNU Metadata Exchange Utilities. Further information can be found on the webpage: http://www.nongnu.org/iwf-mdh/ Laurence, this is very interesting, and thank you for brining it to our attention. To what degree do you see the development of the Exchange Utilities moving away from a Microsoft-based environment? Much of the code is written in C++ (++), but don't know how portable that is. Moreover, some of the descriptive text alludes to Microsoft SQL Server as the underlying database. Alas, many of us don't have access this RDMS. -- Eric Lease Morgan Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department University Libraries of Notre Dame
